How to Become a DIY Investor

Becoming a DIY investor isn’t as easy as painting your kitchen or rigging up a new light fixture–but it’s not impossible, especially with a little training.

It can be difficult to translate financial news into a stock portfolio. You can watch CNBC all day long and still not have a clue how to buy and sell stocks. But the traditional financial media isn’t the only way to grow as an investor, says Kristi Ross, the CEO and president of dough, Inc.

“The one thing I want people to understand is that anybody can do this,” Ross says, “You don’t need a lot of money, you don’t need a lot of time, just 10 to 15 minutes a day while you’re standing in line.”

Ross hopes that with her new platform, dough.com, can help educate and empower people to become a “do it yourself” investor. Dough.com aims to make trading simple with a philosophy of “follow, understand and do,” Ross says.

1. Follow by watching what the traders do.

Dough.com hosts eight hours of live programming with six shows in order to educate people on the fundamentals of investing, by focusing on the traders who do it every day.

Dough.com hosts eight hours of live programming with six shows in order to educate people on the fundamentals of investing, by focusing on the traders who do it every day.

“You can actually follow real people that have real jobs every day,” says Ross. By following traders in real time, you can see their choices and gain the confidence to make your own investing decisions.

Ross says her team hopes to break down the barriers of traditional financial media by providing the audience with access to information in a simple, digestible visual format.

2. Understanding the statistics and market context.

As investors progress, they will have gain more tools to understand the market conditions and statistical analysis, Ross says.

“Ultimately, if you’re going to buy stocks, you are taking a 50/50 shot – it can go up or it can go down,” Ross says. dough doesn’t call the shots but it provides the data that helps DIY investors to make the choice. Where will the stock price have to be in order to profit on a trade? dough’s “profit zone” will show you where you will make money, or lose it, on a trade.

“You are not running in there taking a completely blind shot at the 50/50,” Ross says.

3. Do it yourself by practicing.

Finally, you won’t just sit idly on dough. You can take quizzes to test your knowledge and create a journal portfolio which allows you to track how a stock would have performed, if you weren’t just practicing.